Federal Highway Administration

The Biden administration has caved to GOP pressure and will no longer push states to repair existing highways before building new ones, a move that angered livable cities advocates.

Applying highway design standards to city streets has been a disaster for urban neighborhoods. The same things that make highways safer for driving at 65 mph -- wide lanes, "clear zones" running alongside the road that have no trees or other "obstacles" -- make surface streets dangerous and dreadful for walking, killing street life.

Federal funding for pedestrian and bicycle projects reached a new high last year, according to a report released today by the Federal Highway Administration. In terms of dollars, federal investment in walking and biking more than doubled compared to the previous high, set in 2007, thanks largely to an infusion of $400 million in stimulus funds.

A new month begins today without rules in place to govern federal transportation programs, thanks to an objection by Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) to quick approval of a short-term extension of existing law.

Congressional efforts to set national goals for the American transportation system are stalled for now, but the U.S. DOT said today that it is preparing for an eventual transition to a world where performance targets are the norm for transit, roads, bridges, and ports.

Today is the deadline for state DOTs to allocate at least half of the transportation money they received under the economic stimulus law, and Smart Growth America marked the occasion with a study of what types of projects are getting that cash.

We now have in our hands the 775-page Surface Transportation Authorization Act, which was released yesterday by James Oberstar (D-MN), chairman of the House transportation committee. It is, in many ways, a remarkable bill -- a blueprint for how transportation planning and infrastructure construction might undergo a significant shift away from the mindsets that have dominated for the past half-century. There is a lot to like in the bill.

As their committee's leaders butted heads with the Obama administration, a group of Republicans on the House transportation panel proposed to fill the $7 billion hole in the nation's highway trust fund with unobligated money from the economic stimulus law.

The House transportation committee's new $450 billion bill provides for a national infrastructure bank intended to "maximize the limited resources available for our surface transportation needs," as the panel's early outline puts it.